The Source of the Gift

Have you ever received an anonymous gift that was just what you needed and you wished you could say ‘thank you’ to the giver?  I remember one Christmas when Phil was in graduate school and we were expecting our first child in February, we received an anonymous card with $50 inside.  That may not seem like much now, but then Phil was working through the nights, punching clocks as a night watchman for $1 an hour and trying to keep up with his studies.  Gas was 17 cents a gallon and bread was 9 cents a loaf – so you can imagine what that $50 meant to our budget!  There was a very short list of possible givers since neither of us ‘came from money.’ All of the possible donors we could think of denied having sent the money so we felt sad that we couldn’t thank someone, until we remembered that  “Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of changing.” (James 1: 17)  Our Father had sent it!  We continued to thank Him and He has always supplied our needs and often given us extra so we could be used to bless someone else.

           Through the years we explained to our children that their Christmas gifts didn’t actually come from a chubby little man at the North Pole like many children think, but from our Father in Heaven.  He actually gives us jobs and strength to work so we can buy gifts for them and I think they all memorized that verse so that it could always remind them where all good things come from.

            When you seem focused on the things you don’t have or didn’t get for Christmas, just remember that “No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.” (Psalm 84:11)  So, continue to walk uprightly in His Spirit and “with prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto Him…” (Philippians 4:6) And, if your request is good for you, He will give it to you…in His time.  In the meantime, continue to thank and praise Him as He “daily loads us with benefits…!”

            “Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits – the God of our salvation!  Our God is the God of our salvation; and to God the Lord belongs escapes from death!”  (Psalm 68:19-20)